Remorse
by MaliBiser
Summary: What do you do when you feel nothing, and you should feel awfully plenty? GaaTema family one-shot.


**REMORSE**

Tiny pebbles, mixed with sand grains, crunched under the soles of her shoes as she walked the path leading to the Kazekage Tower. Her feet grabbed the distance with resolution, despite the weariness visible in her features. The face might have shown traces of fatigue, but the eyes were sharp and concentrated on the strangely shaped round building stemming from the flat rooftops of Suna.

She was about to reach the entrance when another figure promptly stepped outside of the shady interior. Kankuro took to the matter without further hesitation: "Did she talk?"

Temari looked up to her brother's equally grave gaze and nodded. "Is Gaara still up there?"

Almost without waiting for the confirmation, the kunoichi resumed her step, leaving the puppet-master to follow. They hurried up the staircase and through the empty hallways. On passing the wide-eyed secretary, they entered without knocking.

Gaara was sitting in his chair, dressed in the white robe, looking almost Kazekage-like. The scene would have been complete if he had been leafing through the stacks of documents lined up on his desk, but he just sat there, staring through a window.

It wasn't the first thing Temari noticed: that was that the sand had retreated to the gourd once more, leaving only the tell-tale specks of dusty grains behind to remind. She was still surveying the floor when she felt a gaze on her. Meeting up her younger brother's light eyes, she noticed they had _the old look_ back on, cold and blank.

She still hated it.

"Gaara", she broke up her inner squirming. "The interrogation isn't over yet, but we think we got enough information."

Kankuro impatiently huffed behind her: "Tell it, then! Don't make us wait!" She ignored him.

Gaara's raspy voice penetrated the air. "Who does she work for?"

Teal eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, before she made a reply. "No one, she did it herself."

The emotionless mask finally broke, if only for a moment, surprise cracking the blank front. He set it up again before Kankuro managed to stifle his incredulous cry. "No way! Why would she do it?" the puppet-master required, angered by the mere thought.

Once again, his sister chose to ignore him. Her gaze was rooted to the redhead. Gaara waited for her to speak, and when she did not, he rephrased Kankuro's question.

Still reluctant to give an answer - almost seeming not to know how to say it - Temari averted her gaze, her lips searching for a word. She delayed it for a moment, before the discomfort became too obvious.

Her eyes darted back and forth, and then she finally gave up with a sigh. "Because you killed her brother, Gaara. Before", she uttered sincerely.

The blank mask didn't quiver for a second - it became even stonier than before, as if all of his tightly trained face muscles petrified under the pale skin. The abrupt cessation of Kankuro's irked background grunting made a far bigger effect, and the sun-coloured office drowned into silence.

Temari continued the report, while the stony mask remained locked on her face.

"She _is_ a local girl, we checked her up immediately, and she _did_ have a brother – Tanaka Hisao. He died eight years ago." She wondered if he would calculate how old he had been, as he kept gazing at her.

"They'll keep her to see if there's something deeper under it, still – but I think they won't find much." As far as they asked _her_, the case was closed. The light eyes finally lowered to some point below her waist.

"We'll go check them out later. Right now, we should prepare the report for the Council. They'd want a meeting, I'd say", liberated from the weight of scrutiny, Temari assumed the more practical tone, as if there was nothing more to it than a bunch of petty inconvenience to take care of. "We'll go arrange the assembly. I'll go tell Hiroko-san", she turned to leave -pulling the shiftless Kankuro with her – leaving Gaara to his stony silence.

It was only after they left the office that she let go of the brown-haired's sleeve and Kankuro growled. Still, he waited – huffing impatiently – as she approached the wide-eyed Hiroko-san to arrange the meeting with the Elders. When the secretary started fumbling with some papers, she motioned for him to follow her and started descending.

"Why'd you pull me out of there like that?" he bristled.

"Do you _want _to be there?" she groused back.

Kankuro paused a step, but she proceeded without a change of pace, and he hurried after.

"We shouldn't have left him like that."

She almost shrugged, but stopped herself at the right moment. She didn't want to shrug, but she didn't know what else to do, and shrugging seemed as good a reaction as any. The words '_He_ will be fine.' also formed in her mind, but she swallowed them, too.

Kankuro might misinterpret. Or not.

She marched onwards.

Humphing, Kankuro caught up. The sunlight, subdued in Gaara's office by the window panes, spilt freely over them as they left the Tower. By the temperature of the air they breathed in, it felt as if stepping into an oven, but they were so used to it that they hardly noticed. It looked like such a normal day. As if nothing out of the ordinary could have happened.

"So what was up with that psycho?" Kankuro surly inquired. Temari halted, giving him a look of disbelief. "Didn't you hear what I just said?"

"I heard ya."

Temari stared some more. "It was her _brother_", she emphasized, slowly, as if trying to break through some unexpected haze clouding his reason.

"So what? That gives her the right to mess around with _our_ brother?"

Temari opened her mouth to say something, gaped around a little, then closed them again without an actual utterance. Kankuro couldn't get it. It was so unlike her.

"Honestly, Temari, you're acting as if you're on her side. What's with you?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" she jumped immediately. Her brother's painted face revealed bafflement. She turned away from his inquiring gaze. "You should go check on the prison, see if they got something new. I'll go bash the guards. How couldn't they see her bringing in weapons?" She left him before he could really agree.

Temari headed towards the guarding station, but her feet lost the quickness of pace somewhere along the way, and took her towards a secluded spot of the village enclosed by a wall, instead. The wall was just tall enough for her to sit on. It divided the dusty, yellow road from Sunagakure's equally dusty and equally yellow version of a park. No greenery there. 'As if only cacti can grow on this soil.'

The Sun was directly hitting the nape of her head.

In her mind's eye, the Sun was not less merciless as it fully glared on a dark-haired face whose skin was too white for the climate to spare of burning. That was her first thought of her. The girl. That she was too pale (and sickly, not prettily pale) to come from Suna. Her documents proved otherwise.

The second notion that struck Temari that day, when she evaluated the people for the job (not that there were many applicants. Not that there was anyone else, in fact), was how quiet the little creature was. Quiet and grave. Her eyes (big ones, very dark ones) were strangely calm, and Temari couldn't really decide on the spot if that was a good thing. _'What a weird girl.' _And she was.

"_Tanaka Jun"_, she had read the girl's name aloud. "_Why did you apply for this job?"_

The girl had smiled a little, just a twitch of a corner of a lip, "_Because I need it."_

Temari scrutinized her.

"_You do realize you would be working directly beside Kazekage-sama." _The unspoken translation went: _'You do realize you'll be in contact with Gaara?' "You think you can manage that?"_

Jun's face finally twitched, slightly quivered – and Temari thought she finally got the reaction she awaited. Fear.

"_I'll do my best"_, she mumbled. Temari guessed – eyeing her overly thin frame and slouched shoulders – that Jun feared hunger more. Now, the wind wielder thought, that play of face muscles could have meant millions of other things.

She remembered the time when she introduced the new assistant to Gaara. The quiver was there again, and the general atmosphere of stiffening and shrinking accompanied it – but those reactions were so normal when it came to her brother that she would have been far more alarmed if the girl greeted him with the same grave calmness she showed at the interview. Gaara's emotionless face didn't help, although he nodded politely and asked for her name.

Still, she proved to be such a good sport about the whole thing, bracing herself and visibly choosing to endure, that Temari was impressed.

The job wasn't hard, really. Mostly making sure Gaara didn't skip meals and rest-pauses and slaved himself beyond his limits, great as they were. There were times Temari wouldn't see him at all in blocks of a few whole days, and not that she minded, but it wasn't healthy for him.

Jun was supposed to change that, and even managed rather well.

Too bad her official task wasn't the only one she set herself to perform.

Another face streamed into Temari's mind. Wild, wet with sweat, dappled with ugly red spots – such that held so little in common with the pale, serious, unreadable young woman she got used to seeing around the Tower, that a person would think twice before ascribing it to the same person.

She wasn't quiet a few hours ago, when the guards had to carry her, screeching and kicking, out of the office by force. She spurted such insults that Temari wished to slam something into her face just to shut her up, as Jun scrambled with the Jonin, hair and clothes covered in sand – weak, much to weak to stop them from taking her away.

They cornered her (Temari and Kankuro and Gaara, that is), after they learned – too accidentally for anyone's comfort – about her plan. They thought she was working for someone else, some foreign force, a greater force – trying to get at the Kazekage. None of them expected it to be solely hers. Revenge.

It was a cunning plan, too. Sand shield doesn't do much against poison. In fact, the absurd thing was that the whole reason Gaara wasn't affected more by it was due to their father. Of all people. If he hadn't pushed Gaara's immunity during his childhood by making him take small amounts of poison daily to adjust his system to it, maybe they wouldn't have found out. Or at least, not so early on.

She probably got impatient - when his 'illness' didn't begin soon enough – and amplified the dose too abruptly, too much, causing too big a reaction in his system, and also arousing suspicion.

But none – no one – thought she did it alone.

Not even when the rage and despair boiled up inside her to such a degree where she actually jumped at him – wielding nothing but a pitiable, rusty kunai blade – like truly mad. The wave of sand engulfed her, but to Temari's surprise, didn't squeeze the life out of her (she was so used to seeing Gaara murder people – wasn't that absurd?). Gaara waited for the guards to come.

And they took her away, and Temari followed.

She witnessed the confession. The words burst out of her, and rarely stopped, except to take a long, wheezing breath. Jun was saying everything.

It seemed she was angry the most with the guards, the interrogator. As if she didn't quite comprehend – while her eye flashed back and forth with lightnings – how come these ordinary shinobi (not _It_, as she referred to Gaara – and not _them_, as she referred to his closest relatives) didn't take her side.

She called them cowards. She called them traitors. (Temari was listening from behind a double-glass.) To their questions and accusations she responded with her own: how could they put a monster into the Office? how could they _obey_ its commands when they knew as perfectly well as _she _knew of everything _It _ever did? had they no conscience? or no backbone? had they no relatives, no people they knew, who were killed by him, or _because _of him?

and all the people in the village thought the same. yes, she knew even the guards thought so, although they were too afraid to speak. she knew that was the reason, the fear, why everyone kept silent when everyone hated him _so much_, as much as she did. and those old guys, those (the titles were too ugly on the tongue to repeat) in the white robes who allegedly led the puppet-show put him there, as a _leader_. wasn't that crazy? wasn't that absurd? wasn't that the craziest thing they ever heard of? putting a mentally unstable blood-sucker as a Kage?

she did what everyone wished someone would do. she tried. at least, she tried. she did the dirty work and now, when she failed, her own people were making sure she wouldn't get some slack. her own people were making sure she got punished for doing something they wanted to do themselves. and if she had succeeded – they would have been making her a (another ugly word) statue in the middle of Suna.

Temari listened behind the double-glass, and – although she had witnessed a fair amount of criminal hearings – felt outraged as she never felt before. The reason she didn't barge into the interrogation room was that she felt stricken even more. The kunoichi paled.

One sentence stuck with her.

_She did what everyone wished someone would do._

* * *

><p>"How could you allow this to happen, Temari-san?" a raspy, smoke-wrecked voice demanded. Beady eyes under the bushy eye-brow arch sternly squinted at her. "You were holding the interview?"<p>

Temari stood before the five wrinkled robed figures who were all pointing their more or less stern gazes at her, as she had just finished giving the report of the morning incident. The Elders sat, listening for the answer she will give to the last remark. She sighed mentally while her outward expression patiently endured the scrutiny.

She already explained everything. Her gaze searched for Baki's, who stood across the room, behind the honourable backs of the old men and women. He fixed his eyes on her, soundlessly urging her to remain calm.

Yeah, she had plenty experience with keeping quiet when all she wanted to do was bang her fist on the table and yell out her real state of mind.

Her voice was acceptably composed, although visibly checked, when she told once more how the data they had collected on the girl didn't rise suspicion; how her birth certificate and other documents matched what she had told them about herself; how, true, they knew her relatives were dead, including an older brother, but also that the records of _his _death clearly showed he had died in an _accident_.

She emphasized the last word – _accident_ – she couldn't help herself, wondering which of these mummified fools covered up Tanaka's murder all those years ago.

If someone's nerve was touched by it, none squirmed to show it.

"Temari-san surely did all in her power", a grey-haired woman remarked, nodding at her to sit down. It might have looked like coming to her aid, but the great lady's tone was too unkind for the kunoichi to feel obliged to gratitude.

She resumed her place at the Council Table.

The man who spoke before continued rattling about the 'immediate action needed to be taken', 'security measures re-examined' and such, before the potential enemy 'felt invited to invade the village with the next sunrise'. Other old voices replied his and soon enough Temari's own role in the incident was momentarily forgotten, as the Elders bickered about the consequences Suna might suffer from the hand of a bitter little assistant.

Consequences for the village. Consequences for Suna. No consequences for Gaara.

She looked at her brother who allegedly presided the meeting, occupying the main post. He hadn't said a word. Not during her report, and not during the accusations that fell on her (she almost humphed out loud) – not even now, when the counter-action was being discussed. Gaara stared at the wrinkled people, but might have been seeing through them.

She didn't know if she was more irked with his silence or their obvious, eye-stabbing lack of worry for the Kage's well-being. As if, even if it crossed their mind to ask for his state of health, the rearranging of guarding shifts seemed so much more important. He was present at the meeting – thus, he must be alright.

Temari glanced at her other brother. Kankuro was staring at the desk, arms crossed over his chest. He too was fuming on the inside.

_'Will this meeting never finish?'_

* * *

><p>It did finish – but not soon enough to suit her taste. The Elders signed the record of the proceeding, put their seal on the changes they made, quietly saluted the Kazekage and retreated to their honourable abodes.<p>

Temari rose, stretching her benumbed limbs. Her leg almost fell asleep and was tingling with a sensation reminding her of ants crawling under skin. Her back was stiff due to the uncomfourtable chair. People would expect they'd buy something more practical for the great Conference Room.

Kankuro was stretching his arms. Temari was about to step towards him when Baki came up to her. "Temari", her old sensei spoke. "How is he doing?" Temari almost frowned.

"As usual. He hasn't said a word." She turned her head towards the redhead bending over his seat to shuffle the papers lying on the desk, and Baki followed. _'If you want to know how he feels, why don't you go ask him?'_ she thought ill-temperedly, as if she didn't know the answer.

Baki was worried. "Please, keep an eye on him. It might affect him more than he lets out." Temari slowly nodded, concealing her inner sulk.

Sensei at least cared, in some way or form. Even if his greatest fear might have lain in the possibility of Gaara's former rage wakening for the occasion, not exclusively his welfare.

He was gone with one more meaningful look.

Temari slowly, deceivingly casually, strolled up to Gaara. "Ready to go home?" she nonchalantly inquired.

Gaara kept his eyes down on the papers his hands were collecting. "Not yet." he answered quietly. "I need to go check something in the office first."

Temari arched an eye-brow. "Alright, don't take too long." He didn't meet her gaze as she walked away to pick up Kankuro. Neither when the two left the Conference Room and headed home.

It was dusk when the siblings entered their house, and full dark night when Temari – annoyed with Kankuro's nervous agitation – snapped and proclaimed she'd check on Gaara herself.

She surly retraced the path she walked on earlier that day and found herself before the hive-like building, a great black shape in the dark background of the sky. Office windows were lit, glaring into the darkened streets.

Temari stood on the path, feeling the desert night chill creeping into her bones, suddenly loosing courage to break in and pull Gaara home.

She was looking up into the circles of light for some time more, before turning on her heel.

* * *

><p>Gaara wasn't in the house in the morning, when Temari descended the staircase and – pulling up the last pony-tail – found Kankuro at his breakfast, already fully-equipped for the day's challenges.<p>

She checked the clock. Very early.

"Today's the Sakyuu mission, remember?" he read her gaze, munching on his food.

Oh. Right. He will be gone all day.

"Where's Gaara?" she asked, taking a chair.

"Out."

She stared at him. _'Was he in the office the whole night?'_

_"_He was leaving just as I got down", Kankuro continued, not seeing her sigh of relief.

He stood up, grabbing the life-sized mummy from the corner of the room and adjusting its straps to his back.

"Check on him during the day. I think yesterday messed him up somehow." With these instructions and one last serious look, Kankuro headed for the doors, leaving the dirty dishes to her charge. "Later", and the entrance door closed.

Temari continued sitting in silence, yesterday's irritation brimming up inside her again, additionally fueled by Kankuro's breakfast mess waiting for her on the table.

* * *

><p>She did as he had told her, though. Her own conscience would have wanted it, anyway.<p>

The kunoichi approached the white tower-looking building for the who-knows-what time that week. The steps leading to the second-floor were as shady and wide as they were the previous day, Hiroko-san and her neat stacks of paper were as familiar as ever, and so was, ultimately – Gaara's office. Except that, unlike yesterday, this morning the floor was spick-and-span, and Gaara was hunched over a document of some kind – just as he should have been.

His eyes briefly darted towards her, before settling on the paper once more. Yep, the _old look _was still on, cold and blank and professional.

Temari stepped towards the desk, not too benevolently.

"Gaara", her voice was slightly sing-songish. It was her _old voice_, the one she had used when the missions' priority would slide from not-getting-killed-by-the-enemy to not-getting-killed-period.

It drew his attention.

"How are you feeling today?"

The paper won his favour once more.

"Fine. This is your today's assignment", he picked a folder out of a bunch and nudged it into her hands. She blinked, then popped an eye-brow. _'Fine then. If that's how you want it.'_

Deliberately professionally, and deliberately coldly, she leafed through the pages, lightly skimmed the text, and nodded to herself. "You'll have the report tonight", she said, and left the office, without a second glance.

* * *

><p>The assignment was a guarding shift, in fact. <em>'How ironic.' <em>It took her out of the village, to the outer ring of protection. Some little reparatory work was being done on the village walls in the direction behind her current post, and as some buzzing about strangely dressed foreign shinobi seen uncomfortably near the village had reached Suna, no risks were being taken.

Basically, she had nothing more demanding to do than pace up and down an imaginary line, seeking protection from the glaring sun under a silly, overly big hat – which left plenty of time for her thoughts to touch the matters of yesterday. The musings draw no conclusions, though, as they continuously spun around the girl's distorted face and Gaara's blank mask, long enough for her to begin feeling sick of it.

When the first round got over and she was replaced to go grab lunch, she didn't return to her house, but chose to eat outside. She briefly wondered if Gaara came home for the meal, but discarded the possibility immediately.

The sun was still ruthless when she resumed her post, scourging the land while her mind persistingly mulled over the attack and the interrogation and the circles of lights splashing on the dark street.

She returned to the village with dusk.

* * *

><p>The evening tones were shading the white walls of the Tower's interior, as she wearily climbed the stairs. She passed Hiroko with a slight, absent-minded nod, wondering when Kankuro will return. One knock, and Temari entered the office.<p>

Gaara was sitting in the exact same position and one would wonder if time truly passed, if it weren't for the night sky peeping from the windows and the different colour of the document he held now.

"The report, as promised. No foreigners on the East Side." She set her papers down in front of him, and he took them. While skimming her handwriting, he nodded: "There was nothing on the West, as well. They might have changed course, but I'll keep the guards for a few more days. Thank you, Temari."

He never once looked at her, keeping the light-green gaze on the desk surface.

Temari was getting tired of it. Although the blank look in the pupilless eyes offered nothing better.

When she asked the question, she did it with a loud sigh. "Gaara. Are you fine?"

She expected immediate, toneless assurance: _of course he is. _She got nothing. He was silent for a very long time. Temari continued waiting because, as he further stared at his desk, his lips parted slightly, looking as if they stood on the verge of producing a sound, still unsure of actually making it.

When he did finally speak, it was a reluctant and not completely successful "I..."

He cleared his throat, and began again. Gaara turned his chair towards the round window, twinkling with stars, so that all Temari could see of his face was the profile.

"I've been trying to remember what he looked like. But I can't... I don't remember any of them."

At first, she didn't get who this 'he' was, but then an idea dawned on her. Her features smoothed from a puzzled frown into surprised attention. This... she didn't expect.

His lips were tightly shut again, so she felt obliged to say something.

"That was before. You were little."

The words sounded empty to her own ears. What she said didn't have any more real consolation than any other proverbial pearl of wisdom she could have pulled out for the occasion.

He stared ahead, brows slightly creased. They seemed to be actually furrowing, and that prompted her to add, with a strange tug on the heart: "You've changed."

Gaara's brows creased further, and all the edgy thoughts that had been shaping in Temari's mind from Jun's attack up to that moment suddenly became bleary. She didn't know what to really think, anymore.

Gaara again seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but this thing seemed to be heavier than the first, for it was more reluctant to drop from his lips.

When he said it, it was uttered as a linear line of words, a whole statement, the tone indifferent and flat.

"I don't feel regret. I don't feel anything."

The words sunk like stones into silence. They sunk to the bottom of her heart. Her eyes widened and her own words momentarily died.

Those were the words of a true monster. For a moment, the old, primal, instinctive fear froze her to the spot.

But then the moment passed.

Would a true monster keep its eyes down and shrink away from her, if ever so slightly, while saying that?

She looked at Gaara more freely. What she saw was a boy, redheaded and skinny, avoiding eye-contact, slouching his fifteen-year-old, still not fully developed shoulders a bit, as people sometimes do when they're cold.

His face was smooth and blank and mask-like, but it was the only composed thing about him.

Suddenly, she wanted to say something meaningful and deep, and as nothing fitting came to her, she proceeded to observe him in silence for a few more moments.

When it finally half-formed somewhere between her mind and her throat, she began.

"You don't... always feel..." she lingered a little, „... what you should." She somehow felt emboldened after getting through with the first sentence. "That's how it goes with all people."

"Sometimes we feel angry when we should be sad, and sometimes we feel sad when we should feel happy. I guess, sometimes we feel nothing. I think that's alright." He listened carefully.

"Perhaps, regret... isn't a feeling." Gaara surprisedly turned his head towards her. The light-green eyes waited for explanation.

"Sometimes you don't feel it, but you know what you have done is something you shouldn't have. Whenever you decide you'll never do something like that again, it's living as if according to regret. So, regret is not a feeling, it's a decision."

_'And so is forgiveness'_, she added inwardly.

"You make it, and hope the feeling will catch up."

That was all she had to say. He again looked as if about to say something, but closed his mouth and simply nodded. She was glad for that.

Temari looked around, glanced at the clock and pronounced: "Kankuro will soon get home. Don't stay too long, or the dinner'll go to waste. So hurry up." She was once more cool and older sister-like. Something like a smile hovered around the corners of Gaara's lips.

She left the room and headed for the stairs.

She had things to think through.


End file.
